Thanks for the warm welcome. Giving up dairy got more challenging this weekend as we've had 2 birthday parties in the past 2 weeks, and I've not had any birthday cake at either one. It's getting to be time for me to explore some soy milk and vegan pastry options. I'll be checking the recipie boards this week. What's got me thru so far is learning that one of our southern culture delicacies are actually vegan: http://www.moonpie.com.

As for my programming, I was did C++ in college http://www.unc.edu, but my 8-5 has me doing mostly VB. I also do some web development, and am pretty comfortable with PHP, so mabey I can help Robert get something done for the site sometime. I also programmed my own video game and I sell it here http://www.questengine.com. I'm a huge video game fan, and actually making one, was a huge life-long dream. It takes genetics (and probably drugs) to be Mr. Olympia big, but it only takes time and effort to make a video game!

directly replacing milk with soymilk in recipes is good stuff. My mother makes cakes with soymilk and even grumpy anti-vegan people don't complain or even realise. Even if you're not a fan of soy milk, once it's in recipes, you can't really tell.

Welcome, Brandon! I don't know about others on here, but one thing I found when I first came over to the green side, was that I had a heckuva time keeping weight on. I lost like 15 lbs in a couple months (and I was veggie b4). I had to force myself to eat a bit more than I was used to, which was actually an awesome bonus since I love eating.

Also, my wife is addicted to vegan chocolate cupcakes, which means I am too. Very tasty.

I'm really looking forward to the weight loss thing. I'm 210 at 6ft. Which isn't fat, but 36in pants fit me a lot better than 34's. And as far as I'm concerned, there's no reason I can't eventually fit a 32. I weighed feb 8, when I went vegan. I'm not weighing again until March 8.

I actually started this vegan thing as a 30 day trial, thinking I might switch back if I was unsatisfied, it was just an experiment. But it made so much sense, and wasn't nearly as hard as I expected it to be, that I'm already preparing to keep it going.

@sinisterkungfu

Lexington, near Greensboro and Winston-Salem

@Daywalker

More of a fan of solitude than of Superman really. I lean toward the Marvel side of the super hero universe.